Skip to content
Skip to main content

How gender equality can help fix the construction industry

Updated Wednesday, 31 January 2018
Women account for under 1% of the construction workforce, but with data pointing to significant industry skills shortages by 2020, Dr Alice Moncaster and Martha Dillon believe the sector must attract and retain more female employees. 

This page was published over 6 years ago. Please be aware that due to the passage of time, the information provided on this page may be out of date or otherwise inaccurate, and any views or opinions expressed may no longer be relevant. Some technical elements such as audio-visual and interactive media may no longer work. For more detail, see how we deal with older content.

The government-commissioned Farmer Review warned in 2016 that the UK construction industry was “facing challenges that have not been seen before”. In no uncertain terms, it called for major industry-wide change. The “overwhelming risks” foreseen in the review sadly seem to have come to pass.

Major contractor Carillion’s collapse comes shortly after an autumn in which UK construction activity fell at its fastest pace in five years. Studies have found that Brexit could cost the industry £10 billion, while the 2017 government industrial strategy was widely denounced as inadequate to generate real change.

Of the many issues Farmer highlighted, the industry’s resistance to modernisation, along with the “ticking time bomb” that is the ever-widening skills shortage, stand out. The government’s Working Futures report into the future of the country’s labour market predicts hundreds of thousands of vacancies in skilled technical, professional and managerial roles by the early 2020s. One obvious solution is to increase the number of women in the construction industry.

Construction workers Construction engineers at Dartford Crossing, England

The worst gender balance

The construction sector has the worst gender balance of any, with the UK lagging behind the rest of Europe. Less than 1% of its 800,000 construction and building trades workers are women, and even when you add architects, planners and surveyors it only rises to 18%:

Graph showing number of thousands of UK employeeswithin the construction industry and the gender. The amount of men is pale green and the percentage of women is dark blue, with women making up a minority for every aspect. The roles included in the graph are: Construciton and Building trades; engineering professionals; Production managers and directors; Architects, town planners and surveyors; Draughtspersons and related architectural; Conservation and environment; Managers and proprietors in other services.
Dillon and Moncaster | Data adapted from ONS figures

Of course, both industry and government have considered this issue. But attempts as far back as the WISE campaign of the 1980s to encourage more girls to consider careers in construction just haven’t worked. While more women are entering the sector, they are leaving just as quickly. The net result is that numbers of women in construction roles have remained more or less static for at least a decade:

The graph shows the percentage of women in roles within the  construction industry from years 2007 to 2017 on the bottom axis and has key events on a timeline dotted in along the top. Key events include Olympic 2012 "Women into Construction" project begins (2008); UK Equality Act (2010); EHRC releases diversity guidance (2011); UKRC women in STEM funding ends (2012); ARB begins diverity monitoring (2013); First UK Women in Construction Awards (2014); Davies Target reached (2015).
Female representation in the UK construction industry. [1] Equality and Human Rights Commission, for the UK Construction Sector [2] Architects Registration Board includes equality and diversity questions for new admissions [3] 25% female representation on UK FTSE 100 boards. Dillon and Moncaster

The blame is repeatedly levied on parents, teachers and careers advisers, and women having children. While the data is simply unavailable for women in the building trades, recent Department for Education figures suggests an alternative reason. Just five years after graduation, long before starting a family, women engineers and architects are already being paid less than their male counterparts.

The lack of career progression that this suggests increases with age, with the number of women in senior positions dwindling to a minuscule proportion. With such inequality of pay, matched by inequality of treatment, it is no wonder they don’t stay.

Bad for women, bad for business

A group of senior industry women believe that not only is this bad for women, it is bad for business. They set up the Equilibrium Network, which funded some of our research looking into whether having women in senior positions boosts business financial performance.

Circular chart shows the age (20-70+) in five year increments of men and women involved in the industry. The majority of women in the industry are in the younger bands whilst men are more dominant in the older bands. Men are in dark blue and women are in pale green.
Institution of Civil Engineers members by age. Martha Dillon

We started by analysing major international and cross-industry studies, all of which indicate that there is a clear correlation between a greater number of women on boards and company financial performance. We then looked in the academic literature for evidence of causation, in order to predict whether this trend might hold true for the construction sector.

 

Construction work in central London Major construction work in central London, England

 

We found three explanations to suggest this is the case. First, having more women on the boards of companies improves the operation of the boards themselves. They provide a greater range of perspectives and insights, more closely representing companies’ demographically diverse stakeholders, as well as improving collaborative teamwork.

Second, having women at senior levels reduces the leaky pipeline lower down companies. Senior women provide role models and mentoring, and a more positive working environment. Also, they are more likely to promote other women, as they are more likely to recognise their skills.

All of these lead to better retention and satisfaction of skilled employees for the company. Diverse teams have also been repeatedly shown to be better performing and more innovative, and so having more women at all levels is also good for team performance.

Finally, better gender diversity at board level improves the image of companies – with both the public and with investors. This helps to boost sales and market performance. As the construction sector suffers from an extremely poor public image, we believe this impact would be particularly positive for construction firms.

 

Construction work at London Docklands Regeneration work at London Docklands

 

Our study also revealed an acute lack of gender data specific to the construction sector. It was based instead on large studies that crossed different sectors and smaller academic studies of a few niche areas or individual companies. This absence of any measurement of gender inequality can only have contributed to the lack of progress in this area.

The ConversationThe new president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Robert Mair, used his inaugural speech to call on his profession to transform infrastructure and transform lives. It is a statement for which the Carillion crisis serves as a violent example. Our research suggests that in order to do this we first need to transform our outdated industry. Promoting women to senior levels is essential for this to happen.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

More articles and free courses

Study with The Open University

 

Become an OU student

Author

Ratings & Comments

Share this free course

Copyright information

Skip Rate and Review

For further information, take a look at our frequently asked questions which may give you the support you need.

Have a question?